Naïda

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

“I’m not feeling so great.” Phil Rodriguez coughed into the phone. The cough sounded a little forced. “Must’ve caught a cold. I think I’m going to call in sick. See you.” Then the signal was gone.

Michael looked at his phone as if it had offended him.

He walked slowly out to his car but stopped with his fingers on the door handle.

What if Rodriguez wasn’t faking?

What if he’d been infected by something in the lake?

Maybe the thing they’d seen was toxic? Or even radioactive.

He and Rodriguez might be dead men.

Wikipedia listed the symptoms of acute radiation sickness. A twist of nausea gave way to a chill in his intestines.

No, that was stupid. He’d been feeling perfectly fine until he’d talked to Phil.

If the object they’d seen really was from somewhere other than Earth, he couldn’t ignore the possibility that it would give off some kind of radiation or be contaminated by microorganisms. Could alien germs overwhelm the human immune system? Or would they be far too foreign even to interact with earthly forms of life?

There was no way to know. Michael remembered reading about panspermia: Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe’s theory that organisms were continually falling from space onto the Earth and might be responsible for periodic epidemics. Opinion was split on the theory, but Michael had never chosen sides. Now the argument was no longer academic.

Maybe he should book off sick, too. Quarantine himself for the sake of others.

Except he’d already been to work the day before and spent the evening with Nicole. He pushed his knuckles against his temples. It didn’t help.

If the thing was from another planet, he had to trust that advanced beings would know better than to bring unwitting death to the creatures they’d come to meet.

He gripped the steering wheel, trying to steady his hands.

His office voicemail held a message from Laura Wood that sounded like she was gritting her teeth. Although she was at a conference out of town for the day, on her return she would certainly demand to know why he’d ignored her summons of the day before. He spent the day finishing up his course outlines, mainly rewriting the previous year’s in slightly different words to make them look new.

His refilled scuba tanks were ready for pickup on his way home, but Harry, the shop owner, was too busy with another customer to talk about Evergreen Lake.

Michael’s car seemed to drive itself to Phil’s house.

Marcia greeted him at the door.

“He’s at work, Michael. Where else would he be?”

He just nodded and backed down the steps awkwardly. At least a fake cold was better than a real illness.

Scuba diving without a buddy was something he’d sworn he’d never do. Reckless. Stupid. A minor equipment failure or a snag on lake bottom debris could be fatal if you were alone.

When Michael had first become a certified diver, he’d persuaded his brother Jay to take the training too, excited to find a bonding experience for them: a natural dive buddy pairing they could both count on. But Jay had lost interest within a few years, and his equipment sat in his garage gathering dust.

Michael called around to some of his other diving friends but none of them were home.

Could he really be sure that whatever he’d seen was worth risking his life?

No.

Neither could he stay away.

As he trudged down the rugged path toward Evergreen Lake, he surveyed the austere landscape. No one knew how the lake had come by its name. Christened by a lumberjack more than a century before? Or named in jest after all of the trees in the Sudbury basin had been sacrificed to rebuild the incinerated Chicago of the 1870s? Decades of regreening efforts had finally coaxed new trees from the barren expanses of exposed Canadian Shield, but most were quick-growing birches and poplars, not evergreens. To Michael, the glacier-carved hills of blackened rock and the small lakes they sheltered held a special beauty. He found peace beside their rugged shores. And escape.

It was strange to think that he needed to escape from anything. His position at the university was the brass ring he’d pursued for years to make his dad truly proud. But an embolism had claimed Dad a week before the job offer. By then, it was a little late for Michael to realize that teaching wasn’t his dream job at all, only his father’s.

Where his father had complained about Michael’s lack of ambition, his mother had proclaimed that it was his curiosity that would get him into trouble. She’d always declared her surprise that he hadn’t pursued a science degree—and her disappointment that he hadn’t pursued women more avidly. The last days of her battle with cancer had been filled with a longing for grandchildren she would never know.

Maybe he could still make his mark on the world by inspiring others to greatness. But in seven years of teaching there’d been no evidence of that.

The water of the lake seemed darker and lonelier this time. Michael pulled himself down through the murk, self-consciously glancing over his shoulder in a trained reflex, looking for a buddy who wasn’t there.

He had a strong feeling that he was on a fool’s errand—that his imagination had got the better of him and there was nothing to be found.

But it was there, it was all there.

His brain struggled for comprehension while his body shivered with a mix of fear and wonder.

The water filled with radiance that illuminated the silty lake bottom over an area about the size of a small suburban lot. Strange structures stood in irregular rows: a garden of vast “elephant ear” plants, or an office worker’s “cubicle farm” except in barely-perceptible motion—he couldn’t find the right analog without knowing whether the things were alive or constructed. What he saw seemed to be a single complex structure built of living materials.

Flattened panel-like objects extended upward like asymmetrical walls about the height of a man but not connected—unless at their bases. Thin, pliant, and nearly transparent, it all gave off light. Everything he saw was a source of light. And the flat surfaces were dappled with patterns of some kind.

With his mind shifting from Sunday School depictions of Heaven to lurid special-effects sequences in sci-fi movies, he fought both the urge to flee and a compelling call to approach.

Afraid or not, he wasn’t going to learn any more without getting closer.

Like a spider dropping from its web, he lowered himself into the middle of the glow, keeping clear of the walls. Or maybe not walls. They spread themselves apart. Welcoming.

Unless he wasn’t the spider, but the fly.

The gelid panels that surrounded him slowly changed dimension as if in response to a nonexistent wave surge. Oblong pouches draped over the upper edges of some of the panels like Salvadore Dali clocks. The panels were extravagantly radiant, brightening as he came among them, he was sure of it.

He’d been right about patterns on the panels, too: not shadows or reflections, but Rorschach blotches, ovoids, rounded tetrahedrons that paraded, each at its own pace, from edge to edge. Short, jagged lines as well—some separate, some in arranged clusters like oversized kanji characters, or the symbol-strewn scribblings of mathematicians' nightmares. His imagination endowed the patterns with meaning, but meaning inaccessible to his conscious understanding. His gloved finger was drawn toward the nearest panel, half expecting the surface to produce a flurry of shooting sparks at his touch.

The image of spider and fly appeared in his mind again.

Why?

He glanced down.

A scream erupted from his throat with an explosion of bubbles.

Half his body was covered by clear jelly that spread upward from his waist like an oil slick. He kicked in a panic reflex, but his feet were already encased. The walls had drawn back out of reach of his flailing arms. He tried to push at the jelly—keep it from his head—but it was too thin and too slick. It reached his neck, his chin. His fumbling attempt to hold his mask against his face had the opposite effect, breaking its seal against his skin and letting the invader in. Another primal scream rattled his regulator before it too was thrust aside. Slime covered his nose and then his eyes. He clamped his lips shut, knowing it was futile. He would either drown or the stuff would suffocate him.

In his last few moments of clarity, he opened his eyes and was startled to see every detail of his surroundings: the petal-like panels with their ink-blot symbols in shades of color, no longer black; stunted weeds struggling upward from the sludgy lake bottom; microscopic specks of plant and animal life suspended in the water. He’d thought the visibility was only about six meters—but now it seemed closer to twenty. He’d never seen so well or so far in a freshwater lake.

Then came surrender, and regret. Bubbles burst from his mouth and nostrils and he sucked greedily for air, even as he knew he would find liquid death instead.

His lungs filled with water, ice cold. Emptied. Filled inexplicably a second time, and a third.

Was this drowning? How had he not lost consciousness?

He was breathing water, for Christ’s sake!

His chest heaved with the effort, but the survival instinct would not let him stop.

With no regulator in his mouth and his body encased in a slick of impossible protoplasm, oxygen was somehow still getting to his brain.

His heartbeat thundered, but panic was a deadly enemy. He had to hold himself together.

There was a new gap on his right where one of the Dali-esque blobs had hung. Was that what had swallowed him? The impression of being eaten was incredibly strong—his body shuddered uncontrollably.

Whatever the reason, the thing was keeping him alive; but for how long? He flung his arms out, trying to find his mouthpiece, and discovered that the jelly no longer impeded him at all. His arms could move, his feet could kick.

Mind reeling, he retrieved his fallen mask and pushed upward toward the sunlight so far away, knees weak as a baby’s. Buoyancy control was effortless—he slid through the water like one of its own creatures.

The escape to shore was anticlimactic: the gel peeled itself off his skin and suit to float limply on the surface of the lake. Water gushed from his mouth as he stumbled to the rocky beach, and a minute or two of coughing seemed to clear the rest. The air tasted sweeter than he’d ever known.

Once safely on land, he turned and watched the glistening patch of gelatin drift away flaccidly with the chop from a rising breeze. He collapsed to the ground in a heap, scuba tank clanging against a stone.

When he could bring himself to look up again, the surface of the lake was empty.

His skin crawling, he fumbled with the straps of his heavy gear and fought to pull the clammy rubber wetsuit from his body. He staggered a few steps away and bent over, gasping from effort and strain.

When he’d caught his breath, he clambered up the rocky slope on legs that could barely support him, only vaguely aware of the dirt path beneath his feet, of grasping branches that scratched at his exposed flesh. His first sight of his car blurred behind tears. As he climbed into it, his body began to shake like a dog after a swim, shedding the excruciating tension.

Then he roused himself and gunned the car to life, gravel scattering in its wake.

He’d forgotten something—something important.

His scuba gear! He’d left it behind on the lakeshore. He should go back for it.

But he couldn’t. The mere thought made him shake again. He gripped the steering wheel fiercely, trying to maintain control.

When he finally pulled up in front of his apartment and killed the ignition, all his energy drained away in an instant, and he sat staring through the windshield, unable to move.

At some point he looked at his watch. Nearly 6:30. He dimly registered that Nicole’s car was in the driveway. It took all his strength to climb the stairs.

She yanked the door open before he could reach it. Her shiny black sheath dress and heels were an indictment.

“Jesus, what are you doing in a swimsuit! We should be leaving in ten minutes.”

The sound he made was a croak. “Leaving?”

“The United Way ‘Be A Goddess’ event. I’ve been asked to give a speech as mayor, and you said you’d be a waiter.”

He slumped against the wall, still outside his apartment. He should do something, say something, but the quagmire of his brain wouldn’t allow thought to form.

“For God’s sake. How quickly can you shower? You smell like rubber. We can be fashionably late, but I don’t want to look like an asshole.”

“I…I don’t think I can go.”

“You must be shitting me!”

“I…something happened. Listen. I need to tell you…”

“Good Christ! Are you drunk? Don’t tell me you’re drunk!” She paced away a few steps, turned back, then snatched up her purse and shook it at him. “You don’t give a s**t about my career. But the least you could do is keep a promise!”

The Smiths could probably hear her. The neighbors, too. He reached out a hand, but she cuffed it away, grabbed a light shawl from a chair back, and pushed past him out the door. Her heels attacked each stair on the way down, and moments later there was an extra growl to the engine note of her BMW as she wheeled away. He watched the car disappear and kept watching long after she was gone.

Inside. He should go inside. Grunting from the effort, he peeled himself free from the wall and stumbled into his apartment. It looked strange in a way he couldn’t explain: a rained-on watercolor painting. He shuffled toward the kitchen. Heard a ticking sound and turned toward the clock to watch the hands move, without registering their meaning. He bumped a chair with his hip. There was a half-empty glass on the table. Or half full. Pour it into the sink, or fill it up? He raised it and stared at the way it distorted the wallpaper behind it.

His hand twitched and he nearly dropped the glass, so he set it back down.

Eyes glazed, he shuffled forward a few steps and noticed he was still in his living room. It seemed like a good idea to lie face-down on the couch, turning his head to the side to breathe. The dark TV screen filled his view. He stared at it, afraid that it would suddenly come to life with strange symbols. The thought made him shudder, and shudder again, until the quaking refused to stop. Bringing his knees to his chest as he lay on the couch, he wrapped his arms around them; but a chill had invaded his very bones. Teeth chattering, he made his way to the bathroom, stripped off his swimsuit and stepped into a shower as hot as he could stand, just letting the hard spray pummel his skin.

A long time later he realized that the water had turned cold. It felt slimy. His eyes snapped open and he frantically slapped at his legs, but there was nothing on them.

He got out and dried off quickly, then dug out a worn pair of track pants and a T-shirt that he wore as pajamas, though he wasn’t sleepy anymore. His eyes drifted over the bedside table and came to rest on a five by eight picture of himself with Nicole from a vacation they’d taken in Cuba over the winter. It was probably the last time he’d seen her smile like that. He reached his hand toward it, but it seemed too far away to grasp. Instead, he noticed that he was hungry.

There was some leftover Indonesian takeout in the fridge, but the sight of the gelatinous sauces made him swallow hard. Instead, he took a frozen Jamaican meat patty from the freezer and heated it in the microwave. In the cupboard was a bottle of brandy that Nicole liked. He poured some into a whiskey glass—three ounces, maybe four—and carefully replaced the bottle. He’d better wash the glass out afterward. Nicole already thought he was drunk—if she came back…. But she wouldn’t. Not that night.

Chewing the meat patty without tasting it, he returned to the living room and sat upright in the middle of the couch, facing the TV. His hand fumbled for the remote, and when the screen lit, he began to flip channels: ten or twenty before he looked down at his hand and saw it twitching on its own. The memory of a slick of clear jelly creeping up his arm gave him another violent shudder.

No, he had to pull himself together. A large swallow of brandy might help. Maybe a few more.

The bottom of the glass showed him the thing at the bottom of the lake. Things. Like a sci-fi horror movie, like a nightmare. His brain floundered through memories but could find no matches for what he’d seen there. He couldn’t possibly say what the memories were; he could only try to guess what they were not.

The giant petals or panels that moved on their own did not fit into any category—animal, mineral, or technological—that he knew.

The structure was artificial—he was sure of that—yet like nothing he had ever seen or heard about. He estimated that it might be as big as two city buses side by side, segmented into uneven compartments by partitions of waving jelly. Spatterings of symbols flowed across and over and between the partitions like a news ticker. Was that their function? Communication? Meant for whom? Humans? Or a species totally alien to the Earth?

Why would such a thing be placed at the bottom of a lake? To hide it? Or only to keep it out of easy reach as some form of test? Like the monolith on the Moon in Kubrick's 2001.

He had to tell someone about it. The government. Scientists. Somebody! Only…what if the conspiracy theories were true and others had already discovered proof of aliens? Had the government bought their silence? Or simply made them disappear?

More brandy only provided more questions. Finally, he left the glass in the bathroom and crawled under the covers of his bed, pulling them well up over his neck. He’d left a light on outside the bedroom door. Just in case Nicole came by. That’s what he told himself.

He was exhausted beyond anything he’d ever felt, yet his eyes seemed to bore holes through the blackness of his bedroom: not cameras but projectors, casting images of petal-like partitions; blotches, squiggles, and lightning bolts; shapeless sacs that could come to life and swallow you whole.

Sometime in the middle of the night he snapped awake.

What if he hadn’t been attacked at all?

What if he had been rescued?

Divers sometimes called the wetsuits and drysuits they wore “environment suits,” because they protected the wearer from the cold, and from the dangerous surfaces of coral reefs or rusted shipwrecks. Certainly, an explorer of other worlds would need protection. Was that what had swallowed him? To say that it had acted like something alive meant nothing—he had no way to distinguish between alien life and a supremely advanced technology.

If he’d been attacked, why had it let him go? If it was some kind of protective covering, why had it responded to him—a human—and provided life-giving oxygen where no air was available? If it was alien, did its actions mean that they breathed oxygen too? Or had the suit of jelly somehow sensed his different need and adapted itself?

A smart wetsuit, or spacesuit…an outer suit, anyway, and alien. An exosuit, in more ways than one.

What about the glowing structure itself? Was it alive, or an artifact?

Both, he thought. Its parts seemed grown rather than manufactured, but he had no evidence that it was sentient. It could be robotic. It moved with purpose, displayed information. Maybe it was an outpost left behind by a roving band of interstellar explorers. A remote camp, control center, monitoring station. All of the above. Or none. It was possible that none of those human concepts had any equivalent among creatures from another world.

Even if the outpost itself wasn’t alive, that didn’t mean it was uninhabited. But the more he thought about it, the more he believed that the protoplasm that had enveloped him was a super-sophisticated protective suit, and the structure it serviced was no longer in use.

Why had its creators come to earth? Where had they gone? And if they returned, would they intend to help or to harm?

The questions swarmed like clouds of biting gnats.

He needed answers. And there was only one place to find them.